Strike Suit Zero |OT| Wing Commander x Macross

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Banned

While I'm personally not put off by difficulty, I do hate lack luster check point systems. If I die on something after I've spent 20 - 30 minutes fighting my way through a level and it brings me all the way back to the checkpoint and I lose all of that progress, I will be annoyed. I hate losing progress. Two or three times of that and I'm probably going to put the game down and not return to it.

Member

While I'm personally not put off by difficulty, I do hate lack luster check point systems. If I die on something after I've spent 20 - 30 minutes fighting my way through a level and it brings me all the way back to the checkpoint and I lose all of that progress, I will be annoyed. I hate losing progress. Two or three times of that and I'm probably going to put the game down and not return to it.

Banned

Because I don't have fun when my time is wasted. It's the same reason I'm annoyed with random battles in RPG's, enemies that respawn when you move from one screen to the next and back, the lack of a save anywhere feature, and when an entire chunk of my time goes down the toilet if I die.

There's methods of creating games where you don't have to introduce severe penalties to players by implementing a shoddy checkpoint system and still maintaining the difficulty aspect.

Member

How odd, I got sent a Steam key. Not that I mind, provided my GOG key shows up tomorrow.

Then again, there is a strong cause for kickstarters maybe getting a GOG and a steam key if they're interested. Which would be quite amazing customer service, really.

Currently the popular interpretation of Update #27 in the comments section of #28 on kickstarter is that we get both. However, cautious pessimist that I am, I have decided to wait for a "blue" post on that matter. Not like steam lets you download the game right now, anyway.

Edit: Popular opinion was right. You get a bonus GOG key if you so desire and may use both the steam key and the gog key for yourself. Awesome.

Member

Banned

Ok wtf... Why is the normal price on Steam 14&#8364; and the normal price on GMG 19&#8364; which means that despite both having a ~20% discount I paid more on GMG than it is on Steam atm, and why didn't Steam show the price before it was out at least?!

Edit: it's cheaper than the first non-limited kickstarter tier that gave pledgers the game... So much for early adopter benefits.

Banned

Ok wtf... Why is the normal price on Steam 14 and the normal price on GMG 19 which means that despite both having a ~20% discount I paid more on GMG than it is on Steam atm, and why didn't Steam show the price before it was out at least?!

Banned

Does anyone want to trade something fun for the extra key I have? I was going to ask for someone to buy Syndicate off GMG for me but that was when they ended up being of a similar or better price than it would be on Steam. Now it's cheaper. Meh.

Banned

Yeah, I figured that out. On to mission 3. I'm not seeing anything special about this still. One might as well go back to Freespace 2 and run through some custom missions or mods for their fix. I also can't find any strafing controls with the 360 controller defaults, so it all feels like arcade air dogfights, especially since you can't kill thrusters or reverse or disable inertia. Ship trails and other glows are distracting and it's also got a version of the FPS screen marmalade when getting hit. Anyway, yeah, I'm not impressed if that wasn't obvious yet. Here are some screenshots I took, maxed settings as far as I could tell. But you can see the ship designs I mentioned. Am I crazy or is there nothing special about them? Did the famous dude only design the mech?

They have these fabulous backgrounds, but the ship designs are supposed to be "functional" rather than pretty from what they said in an interview. So, we ultimately ended up with ships that are boring to look at.

If they had gone for more visual flare I think the reception would've been better, though I realize they want to focus more on the sim side than the arcade side.

Banned

It's definitely not at all a sim on any level, unless the gameplay changes completely when using a joystick instead of the 360 pad I'm using... And you can have amazing shit that look functional, like BSG, or (according to them) their mech.

Member

So far at mission 7 and I am having a blast. The controls feel awesome and the Strike Suit is a welcome addition. Changing in and out of it has become part of the strategy in order to perform quicker turns towards enemies before going back into flight mode. My fingers are working as fast as they can on my 360 controller during some of the more hectic missions. Its a bit of a slow start really though, it takes until the 3rd mission for the game to really kick in and hold what it promises once you unlock the Strike Suit.

A small tip to ante up the first time of the Strike Suit, maybe should have done just a small cutscene the first time it transforms by the player, to show off the kind of cool hardware they just got. Right now its a bit anti climactic with the player just going for it, no big deal or anything about the fact that the players ship transforms.

Actually, depending on how you use the controlls, you can dash in 8 directions. Hold the Y button (or whatever the Strike Suit lock-on button is) and you can dash either up, down, left or right, if you dont hold it you dash forward, backward, left or right. Axis of movement changes depending on if you have locked on a enemy or not. If you are locked you will "orbit" around the enemies and if not locked you move on a 2D plane relative to the camera.

Member

Graphics are janky. The actual polygon models of the ships are pretty poor, dreamcast-ish... no detail in the cockpits etc. And performance is pretty poor. Flying close to a one of the bigger ships/smoke would cause my framerate to hitch.

Flying physics is straight out of Battlestar Galactica the TV Series.
Why does your ship automatically slow down in space after boosting? Makes no sense... oh yeah Wing Commander homage... but this is the 90s anymore, I expected better, faster and more realistic space combat now.

And that's the biggest problem of the game for me is that there is little sense of speed. The static backgrounds make you feel like you are suspended in a sky box.
Sky box is nice though, a little low res on the first level and pretty good on the second. Problem is the second level features a planet exploding, but it's all static, no animation, a great frozen painting... back to the feeling of being trapped in the middle of a skybox. Switch to hardcore mode and you might as well be playing Child of Eden.

I respect the effort the devs put into this, ain't easy! But I think this could be so much better. Music's great though, gives you that BSG feels. Maybe it gets much better when I get the Strike Suit.

Member

Because I don't have fun when my time is wasted. It's the same reason I'm annoyed with random battles in RPG's, enemies that respawn when you move from one screen to the next and back, the lack of a save anywhere feature, and when an entire chunk of my time goes down the toilet if I die.

There's methods of creating games where you don't have to introduce severe penalties to players by implementing a shoddy checkpoint system and still maintaining the difficulty aspect.

Video games have always been like that- if you fail, you have to replay at least some part of the game leading up to the failure. It's integral to how games work, unless you want them to be interactive theme park rides and not games.

The more common this perspective becomes among gamers, the worse off video games are. We are already too far down this road.

The primary interactivity of the game is usually what we refer to as it's 'gameplay' which is repeated until the player completes the game. Games then require some repetition of interaction (which defines the game, or 'gameplay') and penalties that cause interruption from cleanly progressing forward in the game ('time down the toilet') to motivate and/or challenge the player. Without those motivations/challenges, it's not a game.

Is the time well spent the time that we are progressing through the game uninterrupted, or is it the time we are motivated and/or challenged in order to learn and increase our skill at the game?

Banned

Member

Yeah, I figured that out. On to mission 3. I'm not seeing anything special about this still. One might as well go back to Freespace 2 and run through some custom missions or mods for their fix. I also can't find any strafing controls with the 360 controller defaults, so it all feels like arcade air dogfights, especially since you can't kill thrusters or reverse or disable inertia. Ship trails and other glows are distracting and it's also got a version of the FPS screen marmalade when getting hit. Anyway, yeah, I'm not impressed if that wasn't obvious yet. Here are some screenshots I took, maxed settings as far as I could tell. But you can see the ship designs I mentioned. Am I crazy or is there nothing special about them? Did the famous dude only design the mech?
I play in first person, just changed the camera for the screenshots. Oh, and that HUD... Come on...

Do you mean strafing as in Yaw control? I think by default they are bound to RS. RS also has pitch though, which is kind of annoying as the only other flight game I've played had yaw on RB/LB (this was HAWX) and RS was just free camera.

I might give the controls a tweak, feels awkward with both sticks to me, even though I'm super used to third person shooters.

edit: yeah controls are super weird, just checked. No yaw controls on kb/m (mouselook I guess?) and yaw/pitch/roll always have to be on a stick.

Banned

There is yaw on RS as you said, there's no strafing. Everyone knows what strafing is. Like pressing A/D in an FPS. Not yaw, which in an FPS would be simply to move the mouse sideways. In a space game I'd expect vertical strafing as well on top.

Banned

Finished mission two. Feels like crap with a controller (I hate flying with controllers in general so this isn't a negative towards the game), so went back to the mouse/keyboard which is much more accurate/fluid.

The performance could be better, but that's also been mentioned by others. Definitely in need of optimization.

As I mentioned before, the ships aren't anything to look at. Compared to the amazing backgrounds, everything else looks bland.

Combat is pretty fun, though, even without the strike suit. I usually don't play these kinds of games, and I didn't play the old school space shooters since I was a kid when they came out (and I was much more interested in Donkey Kong at the time).

I like how dog fights actually feel like dog fights and you have to bob and weave as you try to track down your targets. My only complaint is that when I try to use the .75 mm guns I have a really hard time seeing the cross hair to line up the shot because it blends in with the background. Having the ability to change your crosshair or change the color of your crosshair would be fantastic.

It would also be great if there was a graphic option to run the game in full screen windowed mode, as I've come to much prefer that option to just full screen or windowed (regular windowed sucks 100% of the time in any game).

Now, my major complaint is that mission objectives are really hard to locate. Everything has red arrows, and even if I spam F half the time I have no idea where I'm supposed to go since things tend to blend in with everything else. There's so much red in the UI that I find it difficult to differentiate one thing from another. This could really be cleaned up a bit, and it would be nice if mission objectives (especially if it's a ship all the way in the back of the map) had a clearer indicator of where they were in relation to your ship.

Because of this, I ended up failing mission 2 4 times while I tried to blow up torpedos, blow up ships, blow up turrets while blowing up torpedos, then blow up a ship which was still shooting torpedos, which I also needed to shoot. That aspect was not fun and it could really use some more polish.

This is my first impression of the game - I still have to play more, but it definitely feels like an indie game so far. Everything it needs is in place, but like most indie games, lacks the fine tuning and polish needed to really be a great experience.

Summary: Beautiful backgrounds and fitting music accompany fun combat scenarios, but some poor UI and gameplay elements detract from the experience and make the game frustrating at times. The ship art is nothing out of the ordinary, and leaves much to be desired.